Register For Starwood’s “Take Two” Promotion

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Update: This offer for the Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express is expired. The current offer allows you to earn 2 Free Nights at participating SPG® Category 1-5 hotels & resorts worldwide after you use your new Card to make $5,000 in purchases within the first 3 months Learn more about the special offer here.

Starwood has just announced the details of their first quarter 2016 promotion, entitled SPG Take Two.

Through this promotion, Starwood members can earn the following bonuses for stays between January 11 and April 30, 2016:

2x Starpoints at all properties worldwide for stays of two or more nights

Registration is required, and bonus points earned through the promotion should post 2-4 weeks after the qualifying stay.

As mentioned above, the 250 bonus Starpoints per night are limited to participating properties, which are extremely limited this time around. So limited, in fact, that Starwood didn’t create a list of non-participating properties, but rather created a list of participating properties.

How many points do you earn with SPG Take Two?

With Starwood you ordinarily earn:

2 Starpoints per dollar spent

Additional 1 Starpoint per dollar spent if you’re a Gold or Platinum member

Additional 1 Starpoint per dollar spent if you’re a 75 night Platinum member

That means through this promotion, a stay of two or more nights would earn you four Starpoints per dollar spent for a base member. On the other end of the spectrum, a 75 night Platinum member paying with the SPG Amex would earn eight Starpoints per dollar spent. Valuing Starpoints at ~2.2 cents each, that’s a return of ~18% for 75 night Platinum members paying with the co-branded card. Not bad, but also not worth planning your stays around.

Keep in mind that on top of that you earn 250 bonus Starpoints per night (even on one night stays) at select properties.

St. Regis Doha at sunrise

How does this compare to Starwood’s recent promotions?

In the spring SPG offered “Double Play,” whereby you earned double base Starpoints on stays of two or more nights, plus 1,000 bonus Starpoints after every five eligible nights, up to 4,000 bonus Starpoints

The “double Starpoints for stays of two or more nights” seems to be the new standard promotion, though I’d say this one is slightly better than past ones. The past two had a list of non-participating properties for the double Starpoints, while all properties earn double Starpoints through this promotion.

Signature bloody mary at the St. Regis Monarch Beach

Bottom line

This is a pretty standard promotion as far as Starwood goes, as they’ve offered a similar promotion twice in the past year. I wish we’d see some more creativity from hotel loyalty programs. This isn’t limited to Starwood, as all the major chains seem to more or less be recycling the same promotions.

I guess given the state of the hotel industry, we should be happy about any promotions at all.

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About luckyBen Schlappig (aka Lucky) is a travel consultant, blogger, and avid points collector.
He travels about 400,000 miles a year, primarily using miles and points to fund his first class experiences.
He chronicles his adventures, along with industry news, here at One Mile At A Time.

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